An apology. And tea.

So... my last post wasn't intended to be a smash on anyone who likes traditional holiday tunes. I've just realized lately what a propensity I have for disconnection. Some days it's a battle to stay not just physically, but also spiritually and emotionally, awake. Who am I kidding? It's been most days lately, which is why I've taken to just turning everything off. Thus, when I actually turn something on it'd better be good. :-)

I apologize if I offended anyone.

On a kind of giddy note, I like tea.

This time last year, I did NOT like tea. This time last year, I didn't want to even consider tea as a viable beverage option. Oh, but I didn't know what I was missing until this week. :-)

Last spring, I decided I'd give tea a shot & started with the Celestial Seasonings fruity stuff. Why not? There's a tea factory just up the road in Boulder. That was all well and good. I tried some breakfast teas & greys. They were alright too (well, except for the one that tasted like old cigarette smoke smells).

Then my friend Elizabeth gave Jer & I tea for Christmas.

She gave us this stuff:

Tea Gschwendner's Winter Magic
(and their apple pie tea too)

Since I cracked the gift open on Sunday evening and put it to the test, I've had to resist chain-drinking the stuff. It's incredibly delicious. :-)

Thanks, Elizabeth!

Favorites

It's not often that I get to cram so many favorites into one day:
- great, but mildly unlikely, company
- sweet bike time
- light rail
- knitting
- crisp, clear, cold weather
- soul-searching
- coffee with Jero (I can have coffee again!)

This day was nearly 2 weeks ago and it's been a bit of an anchor in the crazy. God hears my prayers and responds in most surprising ways.

Warmth, or lack thereof...

There are a few blatantly obvious things that have been driven home for me this Christmas...

- it's cold outside. yes, even in SC. and people sleep in it.
- i've been taking a lot of things in life for granted.
- story is a beautiful, God-given gift.
- i love and appreciate my family, and I don't tell them that enough.
- i'm pretty sure that the last realization goes for my friends too...

The past few months have been full of newness and busy-ness and more reading crammed into the smallest time frame than any other time in my life, but I feel like they've also been full of a sort of inaction. I suppose it's the learning-first-then-doing sort, but it's a little hard to stomach and I find myself wondering if I could've been a better steward of these few short months. Continued food for thought, not reason for despair. :-)

But story, oh story! I have been devouring stories, enthralled by them. (Reminds me of a post I made sometime earlier in the year about wanting to read Scripture that way... I think I got more than I bargained for in that department. :-D Open-mouth-in-front-of-gushing-fire-hydrant-style. No complaints, though... I just know a few things I need to change as I move into this next semester...) My picks for holiday reading so far have ranged from Jean Duprau's City of Ember to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to some thought-provoking non-fiction... I don't know what else will enter the list at this point. I'm just hungry for good story and I can't quite put words to it right now.

A Christmas Eve playlist, (courtesy of Jeromie, crafted for Ewan):
- "Trumpet Child" by Over the Rhine
- "Hymn 101" by Joe Pug
- "Take Me Home" by Genesis as covered by Dave Smith
- "John Saw That Number" by Neko Case
- "Sometimes" by Punch Brothers
- "Rains in Asia" by Jump
- "Quiet" by This Will Destroy You

Hop on over to Jeromie's blog sometime tomorrow for some thoughts on these... in the meanwhile, I'm diggin'em.

Up Next: Pirate Hats & Duct Tape

A Nearly Perfect Evening

Today at work was a bit hectic, but the evening has been almost heavenly... and it's only getting better!

We've:

- run / walked on a crisp, cold evening
- come home with froze nozes and...
- made hot chocolate with peppermint sticks!
- listened to good music and laughed about how our iTunes has one of Phil Keaggy's acoustic albums labeled as EXPLICIT
- made delicious cake that involved some chocolate pudding
- made a yummy alfredo with mushrooms & spinach (2 favorites)

and then we:

- looked out the door to see a dusting of snow and more coming down!

Rhythms

As with many other things in my life, I have yet to discover (or recover) a rhythm to updating my blog. I guess I just do it as the mood strikes. And the mood has struck!

Last week, Jeromie got me a new travel mug. It's a perfect-for-Liz size (8oz) and a perfect-for-Liz format (insert your own picture!). As soon as we got home, I got to work creating my own little insert, and in doing so I inadvertently broadened my doodling horizons. :-D I have always been a fan of what I call "swirlies..." not the toilet kind, of course... and now I've figured out how to incorporate them into actually drawing something other than a page full of swirly lines!

I've become a bit of a doodling fiend ever since, especially after purchasing some fine-point sharpies. It took a while to find the right paper, but the 3x5 sketchbook I bought this morning seems to be just the thing. So here are some of my favorites from today...








I think the colors are a bit off on the computer, but not too much. So there you go!

* * * * * * *

Is anyone else blown away by the fact that it's pretty much the middle of December???

Married Christmas

Ah! Now our house smells like Christmas tree instead of doggie-dog! This week has been awesome. Tiring, but awesome. My sister (Diane) and her husband (Drew) and Jeromie and I have sorted holidays out such that Diane and I are "home" at the same time, so we all got to hang out a good bit on Thanksgiving and yesterday. The time went by toooooo fast though, and I feel like we didn't get to actually talk as much as we'd've liked to. (Yes. I just apostrophized twice in the same word.)

Today was just me and my Jeromie... decorating for Christmas.

We found the perfect tree...




and decorated it...


and Jeromie took pictures...


and then we celebrated!



Twas muchest of fun... and, as Jeromie just pointed out over my shoulder... this is just the beginning!

i'm chile, not argentina

This caboose heater is looking awfully nice right now. If it worked. And weren't in Greenwood. :-)

Thanks to yesterday morning's power outage, the thermostat and/or furnace have decided to go on strike. Jeromie and I woke up to blank alarm clocks (which were not responsible for the waking) & no lights, took showers by headlamp, and wondered about the cause. The power came back on minutes before we walked out the door, and everything seemed fine, so we went on our way. When we arrived home yesterday evening, we heard a clicking noise coming from the thermostat and turned the whole system off. When Jeromie turned it back on, the clicking returned, with no apparent activity from the furnace. Combine that with a cold rainy night and a cold rainy morning and you get a cold sniffly Liz and a yellow lab who has chosen to curl up in a ball on her bed for the duration of the day. I'm hoping it gets fixed soon, as my brain and fingers feel frozen, but in a way I'm glad for the inconvenience.

Lately I've been pretty frustrated at the American bubble and especially the role I play in it. If I'm not intentional about it, life is fairly comfortable and the state of the rest of the world (including the world right down the road from my house) is fairly easy to ignore. Since realizing this, I've been trying to be more mindful but much of the time it takes a swift kick in the pants from God Himself through Scripture & circumstances to peel the scales back from my eyes... scales that seem to grow right back! There is homelessness and dire poverty within a few short miles of my house... and freezing temperatures don't discriminate. There again is the same across the globe and I sit here in relative comfort, able to cook up whatever my imagination settles on for dinner. It's not as if this information is new to me either... perhaps just in a new context.

I know that seeking God & His kingdom first is the best thing I could ever do, yet somehow in daily practice I seem to do nothing more seek my own satisfaction. It makes me sick to see this pattern repeating and yet I don't know what to do to break the cycle but seek the forgiveness that Jesus provides and pray for the help of His Spirit to bring lasting change.

I'm going to go do that.

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P.S. "That makes me nervous" is NOT something you want to hear from the guy who's working on your heating system.